Sri Lanka to announce local elections after money guarantee from Treasury

Sri Lanka’s election commission on Monday (March 6) declared that it will announce a new date for the cash-strapped country’s local body elections after getting a guarantee from the Treasury that it will get the funds to hold them.

The island-wide polls scheduled for March 9 were postponed due to several reasons linked to the island nation’s economic crisis.

“We have asked to meet the Treasury Secretary, the Inspector General of Police and the government printer,” Election Commission chief Nimal Punchihewa said on Monday.

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The new date will be announced with a guarantee from the Treasury, he said.

Local body polls

The meeting follows last week’s order by the Supreme Court on the Secretary Treasury to release the budgetary allocation made for conducting of the polls for 340 local councils in the 2023 budget.

The election to appoint new administrations to local councils for a four-year term has been postponed since March last year due to the economic crisis.

The election scheduled for March 9 and the postal voting scheduled for February 22, 23 and 24 did not take place as the government printer could not print the ballot papers for postal voting.

The main opposition SJB went to the Supreme Court seeking a court order on the officials to cooperate with the Election Commission to hold the elections.

The opposition accuses President Ranil Wickremesinghe of scuttling the elections.

Sri Lanka was hit by an unprecedented financial crisis in 2022, the worst since its independence from Britain in 1948.

(With agency inputs)